Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better

Happy Saturday!

So, no, James Madison may not have the Dawn Evans star-power that brings them national attention – but they’re still serious about winning the CAA. They dispatched the Pride with ease, 71-54. BTW, keep an eye on the growth of conference-mate Elon.

A major player for women’s basketball in the NCAA gave the Girls’ Basketball team from Pike High School a lesson they’ll likely never forget following a season they don’t want to remember.

It was going to be a promising season for the Pike Girls’ Basketball team. Two of the players had already committed to play basketball at D-1 schools. That is until January 15th, the girls’ big game against Ben Davis. Sportsmanship was noticeably absent from the court. The girls’ basketball teams from Ben Davis and Pike High Schools erupted in a mid-game brawl, with all of it caught on camera.

Angel McCoughtry, the star forward for the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream and Olympic gold medalist, came out as gay with fiancée Brande Elise last year after an alleged dispute with her overseas team during the U.S. off-season. “With all the energy I felt this was something I had to do and I wasn’t thinking about the effects it would have on my career,” she said.

Since coming out, she has lost friendships and disappointed family members, but despite the ongoing chaos, McCoughtry has continued to push forward with her life.

The sound of leather on pavement was all too familiar to the residents on an otherwise quiet street marked with brick houses and finely groomed landscape in this town just north of Syracuse. One by one, neighbors popped their heads out of front doors as the noise instantly took them back in time.

And sure enough, Breanna Stewart was dribbling a basketball on a nearby driveway.

Sessions and Mitchell are trying to absorb it all and then file it into that vivid section of long-term memory … while also attempting not to be overwhelmed by the emotions and difficult tasks ahead. There already have been plenty, with more to come. The Gamecocks have an SEC matchup with visiting Kentucky on Thursday (SEC Network, 7 p.m. ET), and then their long-anticipated showdown with No. 1 UConn on Big Monday (ESPN2, 7 p.m. ET) at Colonial Life Arena.

The game against the Huskies will be the most spotlighted women’s basketball game — and perhaps women’s sports event of any kind — ever in the Palmetto state. This is the vision coach Dawn Staley had when she took the job eight years ago, and it’s what she sold to incoming recruits: “Come be a part of building this. I have the blueprint.”

Breanna Stewart has got it all down now. In a way that’s both friendly and business-like, she anticipates the media’s questions before they’re asked, and then answers in complete and polished sentences. She wears the cloak of “best player in women’s college basketball” not just comfortably, but even effortlessly.

Surely, though, it’s not that easy. Coach Geno Auriemma’s UConn “system” has produced 10 NCAA championships and a group of elite players whose personal accomplishments have become a part of basketball lore.

But this, too, is one of the program’s hallmarks: The superstars shine very brightly without seeming to bask in their own limelight. (Or at least not too much. Diana Taurasi might have done a little basking, but not at the expense of her team’s goals or her own growth.)